In 1977, members of a Communist labor union protesting the Concorde ban in New York interrupted the start of the 8 p.m. news on TF1. This is how the incident was covered the following evening. The replay of the incident can be seen starting at around the 2:30 mark; it all ended with the anchor casually smoking a cigarette and casually chatting with the protesters:
If you want to talk about unflappable in a very serious situation, they don't come much more unflappable than former CBC News anchor Peter Mansbridge, who anchored the breaking news coverage of the shootings on Ottawa's Parliament Hill back in 2014. Sadly I can find little in the way of online video of that coverage and it's a real shame, because I watched it live and it was an absolute masterclass in how to handle breaking news in a calm and authoritative manner. Just from watching that coverage, I learned a lot in how to handle breaking news without panicking, without letting the story run away with you, and it was truly an education.
I watched on CBC as well. Mansbridge was brilliant. Clearly calming relaying a story. And able to complete a sentence on his own with relying on an autocue. THAT is the mark of a real journalist. A far larger number of people can read but when you have to tell a dynamic fast moving story with the autocue screen completely blank , that is a true skill. Just recently with the London Bridge attacks, the presenters I've seen couldnt even tell the story without the deer in headlights look, the halting speech or using "indeed" after every other word. Thats sad.
Cronkite, Mansbridge, Jennings, Brokaw, Koppel, Lloyd and others of the old North American network anchor guard were masters of calmly and masterfully speaking with no autocue for hours.
Last edited by Mouseboy33 on 4 December 2019 1:10pm - 4 times in total
On British/International outlets, there are a few names that immediately spring to mind when it comes to the unflappable and ubercool control. I defy anyone to find an “um” or an “ah” during rolling coverage anchored by any of Peter Dobbie (BBC World/Al Jazeera), Alastair Stewart (ITN), Philippa Thomas, Martine Croxall, David Eades and Karin Giannone (BBC World).
As pointed out in the post above, talking open-ended for hours on end without an autocue, with all sorts of carnage in your ear and around you, takes real skill. The BBC World coverage of the Nice terror attacks (anchored by Martine Croxall and Karin Giannone) was faultless.
I’ve also just watched the post above about the hostage situation at the Kool News station. All of those presenters conducted themselves in a very calm and, again, faultless manner, considering what they’d just witnessed or been subjected to.
Not sure if it’s coolness but an entire station here in Baltimore had to evacuate due to someone ramming a truck into their lobby and barricading themselves. WMAR after network programming faded to black and they were off air for about an hour. However they went to a nearby hotel to keep working. Someone grabbed a CNG and they were able to route the unit to their sister station in Phoenix, AZ who then sent the signal to ABC to uplink to their transponder (which makes sense as the network’s satellite feed was still technically on the station even though it was feeding black). When they got back on air they were calm and professional and did a great job despite lacking their normal resources.
I can’t find anything regarding their live coverage but here’s security video: